The annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is here! Which means, for all of you single hetero dudes out there, Valentine’s Day is today. And pretty much every day hereafter, considering there are 17 models in the issue, and about 40 pictures of each of them in the online edition, which, if you mete out your intake of it, should last you through the apocalypse of 2012, and then some.

The 2011 Swimsuit Issue features two hapa hotties (ha-tties?): Jessica Gomes, an Australian native of Portuguese and Chinese descent, and Chrissy Teigen, a Utahan who’s Thai and Norwegian.

The December issue of American Vogue has a fashion story on a “new crop” of Asian models–never mind that most of them have been around for several years–who are, quoth the lady mag, “redefining traditional concepts of beauty.”

Which raises the question, “traditional concepts of beauty” where, exactly? Because there are plenty of places in the world where, traditionally speaking, Asian women have long been considered beautiful. Like in, um, Asia, for example? Even in Western countries, Asian beauty, for lack of a more specific term, isn’t a new concept (although, granted, sometimes, it’s a creepy, fetishy one.)

This year’s Tits & Assfest, held at the Lexington Armory in NYC, featured Adriana Lima wearing a $2 million bra encrusted with diamonds, sapphires, topaz stones, and maybe a little mother’s milk (Lima had a baby last year)…

Why She’s a Babe: Not only is Sonia the first model of Indian descent to grace the pages of Sports Illustrated‘s Swimsuit Issue, she’s also a sophomore at Harvard, where she’s studying economics. Can you imagine what it’d be like to be her roommate? You could never borrow her clothes or have a pint of ice cream or a beer around her without feeling like a pathetic, fat slob, and despite secretly hating her and her perfection, you’d have to befriend her, because she’d be your in to meeting hot guys, and not just goofy undergrads, but, like, hot graduate students doing their dissertations in something sexy like philosophy who spoke eight languages and lived part-time in a real city like Paris or En-Why-See, dudes who would, unfortunately, only befriend you because you’d be their in to the swimsuit model.

Sigh.

Fortunately for that poor lass, Sonia is taking a year off from school to pursue her modeling career. In other words, there is a god.

Celebrity death vultures have been busy the last week picking over the bones of 20 year-old, South Korean model Daul Kim, who was found hanged in her Paris apartment in an apparent suicide November 19, which may explain why her blog, I Like to Fork Myself–scoured by reporters as though it were a suicide note (before the alleged existence of an actual suicide note was revealed)–has since been switched to invite-only and is no longer available for public rubbernecking viewing.

I, too, have been guilty of participating in this scavenger hunt, the search for the why behind her death. A year-and-a-half ago, I wrote about Daul Kim and the things I liked about her: her goofy-cool factor, her bangs, and her blog, which I described as a “zany, irreverent diary of her fashism experiences.” When I read of her death, my first impulse was to return to the site and figure out what I had missed. I mean, zany and irreverent? Were these words one could really use to describe someone who had taken her own life? What dark thoughts and creeping shadows had I failed to see on the edges?

They may get a bad rap, but bowl cuts on women are sexy. I got one when I was 18, and not only was it liberating–like a 90′s version of burning my bra–but it actually got me more attention from men, much to my surprise. Like smart, cool men whose idea of beauty wasn’t limited to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Bowl cuts have also been traditionally associated with hard times, and since we’re still in the thick of this nasty recession, there may be no other look that’s more now.

Meet Daniel Liu. He recently signed with Ford Models and can be seen in the upcoming Uniqlo Fall/Winter campaign. He’s of Taiwanese descent and is 6’3″(!) of man. He’s also our blogger pal Joz’s (8 Asians) cousin.

Incidentally, we’re having lunch with Joz this week, where we will 1) try not to drool on our food as we grill her about the hotness she’s related to, and 2) do our damnedest to get invited to their next Family Gathering.

What can we say? The world celebrates beauty–and we, in keeping with that, sure do love ourselves some supermodels. We’d like to wish the lovely, lovely, lovely Ujjwala Raut a very happy 31st birthday! May she continue to enjoy the benefits of having exceptionally long limbs, a perfectly symmetrical face, and the ability to “smile with her eyes” for years to come.